Lifetime
by Ronja-R
Summary: One couple, one life, one-shot.


For some reason I can't reply to reviews right now. I've replied to some via PM and I guess I'll have to continue to do that if the problem persists.

I wrote this in one sitting last night. Haven't proof-read it and I didn't map it out before I started so it may not be the most coherent thing I've ever produced =)

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><p>When Serena heard the news it didn't surprise her. It probably should. From a medical standpoint it should. But she had been expecting this.<p>

She sat in her limo as it slowly made its way through the city, heading out to the Hamptons. It would take a while to get there in this traffic. Her mind had time to wander. She thought back on the people who owned the house she was heading out to, thought about their life together over the years.

Chuck and Blair. Blair and Chuck. At first it had seemed so unlikely. The two of them, out of all the people in the world, falling in love. Then it had seemed so obvious, so inevitable that they would be together and that they were as meant to be as any couple could be. Then all the bad things had happened and nobody had ever expected them to recover. But they had. And once they were back together they were forever. Truly a force to be reckoned with, two of the savviest, most ambitious people she had ever known, never stopping until they had achieved whatever goal they set their sights on.

It had not been easy at first. Serena knew that all too well. When they first got back together they had had a lot of issues to work through. Blair had wanted them to go to couple's therapy. Chuck had grudgingly agreed. They never talked about what went on during those sessions but over the course of the next couple of years they seemed to be able to work through the problems they had had. As they both left their teens and became adults they matured and found new ways of handling problems, both within the relationship and in all other aspects of life.

After Blair graduated from Columbia they got engaged. Ten months later they were married. The following year Blair gave birth to their first child, a son they named Julian, and Serena vividly remembered how Blair vowed she would never give birth again for as long as she lived. A year later she was the one who suggested to Chuck they should give Julian a sibling. When Philip was born three years after his brother Blair had a planned c-section. This she deemed an even worse way of birthing a baby and she adamantly said this was it, no more kids. Chuck told her it was her call, he was thrilled over the two sons they had and while he would have liked a daughter as well he would let Blair decide. When they decided to get pregnant again a few years later they opted for in-vitro fertilization to be able to decide the sex of the baby. Serena had been horrified, Dorota had come as close as she ever would to quitting her job and Nate had told them it was in really bad taste. Celeste was born four years after Philip, this time with Blair having an epidural and declaring she wouldn't mind having yet another baby so long as she had it with an epidural. Chuck had rolled his eyes and pointed out that he'd had a vasectomy two months before Celeste's birth.

Celeste was now 45 years old, married to the son of one of Chuck's former business partners and living on the Upper East Side with two children. She loved designing and had taken over Waldorf Designs after her grandmother. Julian was 52, divorced and with a son by the woman he dated before he met his now ex-wife. He had gone to Yale, become a lawyer and refused to work for his parents, starting up his own law firm shortly after his thirtieth birthday. Philip had died at the age of eleven. He had been diagnosed with ependymoma the year before his death but Serena didn't know much about what had really happened. Neither Chuck nor Blair had wanted to talk about it while he was sick, being too exhausted from everything that was going on. After he was gone Serena hadn't wanted to ask.

Some marriages fell apart over the loss of a child. Chuck's and Blair's had not. From the point where they had gotten back together to the very end they had been at each other's side. They were one of those couples where it seemed wrong to see one of them without the other. Not that they didn't have their separate interests. They were not attached at the hip. But they just seemed to belong in each other's company, thrive from each other's presence and draw whatever strength they needed from each other. They could be at the same party in opposite sides of the room and there was still a tangible connection there.

Their children had grown up in some ways so similar to their parents and in some ways very different. Celeste had inherited her mother's love of fashion, her sense of style and her sense of propriety. What she lacked was the ambition to be the queen bee. She could care less if she was the most popular girl at school because she was convinced she was the classiest. She also had a fear of conflict and would rather back down from a situation than face it head on. She hated old Hollywood movies, loved playing classical music on the piano and had beaten Chuck at chess when she was eight, then declared she had mastered the game and never played it again.

Julian was a passionate sports fan and quite the hot head as a teenager. Like his father he was a ladies' man but unlike his father he never found someone special to devote himself to for real. In his mid-twenties he became a serial monogamist, having had seven steady girlfriends by the time he was thirty-five and got married. The marriage lasted four years, a personal best for him. He loved the law but was bored by business, refused to go to Europe because he felt it was lewd and had a fascination for aquariums. When he was six he had wanted a bass for his aquarium. Blair had said no. Chuck had suggested they just buy him a Sea World.

Philip had been the most inquisitive of the litter, always asking questions, often ones his parents had no good answers to. He loved Disney movies, loved to go ice-skating with his mother and kept pestering his parents for a puppy. He was much more mild-mannered than his older brother and would often play the mediator when Julian got fed up with his seven years younger sister.

After Philip's death the family stayed in New York for six months. Then Chuck and Blair decided to leave the city and get away for a while, taking their two living children around the world. Before they left Blair started a memorial fund in their son's name devoted to cancer research and Chuck made a donation to the hospital that had treated him. Once they returned to New York they had both decided to try and move forward with their lives and to focus on cherishing their memories of their younger son rather than dwell on what they couldn't change.

The years went on and by the time Celeste was in senior year of high school Blair and Chuck bought a house in the Hamptons and moved out there. They kept an apartment in the city for overnight stays, an apartment Chuck soon banned Julian from using as a bachelor pad, but did most of their business from the Hamptons house. Chuck took up riding again and Blair spent the better part of three years getting the house furnished and decorated exactly the way she wanted it.

All through their marriage Chuck and Blair Bass were known as the couple who threw amazing parties, often with a theme and preferably a touch decadent. The tabloids loved to write scandalous stories about how their marriage was falling apart, having made bets on their wedding day that the marriage wouldn't last more than a few years. The stories they wrote made Blair furious while Chuck just yawned at them. Anyone who knew them knew their marriage was solid and the stories in the papers were just fabrications. After a few years Blair wanted to sue for slander which Chuck vetoed. He refused to give the papers that much attention and insisted that the best revenge was to keep their marriage alive and thriving. The truth was that while they had been rather scandalous when they were teenagers they had both matured since then and their teenage selves would probably think they were a bit boring. But if they were boring out in public they made up for it in the bedroom. It had not taken Serena long to learn that it was a very bad idea to play "Never have I ever" with Chuck or Blair.

Not that things were all peonies and champagne and limo rides for the Basses. They could bicker for months over where to spend their summer, argue over whether or not they should buy their children pets and discuss where to buy their next hotel for hours on end. On a few rare occasions one of them would scheme against the other, hardly ever with positive outcome. During the first years of their rekindled relationship Chuck had a hard time stomaching Blair's friendship with Dan Humphrey but that friendship had frizzled on its own after college. As far as friendships went Chuck and Blair stayed good friends with Serena and Nate all their lives. They also had a dozen-or-so other couples they enjoyed spending time with but other than that they mostly had their own circles. Or rather Blair had her own circle, a crowd of minions, co-workers and more genuine friends she liked to spend her time with. Chuck was more of a loner, the type who had few friends but very close friends.

Then something changed. It happened subtly, so subtly that hardly anyone noticed and those who did didn't think much of it. Serena was the first one outside the family to have any real clue as to what was going on after Blair confided in her that Chuck was getting a touch too forgetful. A month before his 69th birthday he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, a diagnosis Blair managed to keep hidden from the public eye for almost two years. By that time it was too obvious to hide it. Her husband's illness was the second greatest tragedy of Blair's life, topped only by the far too early death of her son. The disease changed his personality as it made him regress and he became almost completely dependent on Blair. Whenever she was out of sight he would get concerned and ask for her. Sometimes he would ask Blair where his wife was, not recognizing the woman in her seventies as he was expecting a much younger person. While Blair had always wanted to spend as much time with him as possible it became far too strenuous to live like that and never have any room or time for herself. Celeste insisted that they place him in a home but Blair couldn't bring herself to do it. She didn't want to abandon him or give up on him and she couldn't imagine not living under the same roof with him anymore. Eventually Julian hired a team of nurses to help take care of his father at home. Blair hated the intrusion but welcomed the chance to get a break from the constant demand.

Over the next few years Chuck continued to decline, forgetting more and more of his life with Blair. It was plain to see how hard it was on Blair but she gritted her teeth and refused to give up. She told Serena once that the worst part had been the years when he was still Chuck and very much aware of what was happening. One evening he had looked at a picture of Philip and asked why they kept pictures of other people's children around. Moments later he had been lucid again and absolutely horrified that he had forgotten his own son. When the disease progressed to the point where he was no longer aware of it Blair was relieved. But Serena knew it was killing her inside to watch him succumb to the illness and become a different person. For a while he kept asking for his father, and those times Blair would call Serena and cry.

Six months ago Chuck Bass had died. His overall health had been deteriorating over the past years and in the end he caught the flu and never recovered. The children had insisted he be brought to a hospital but Blair had kept him home. She knew he would rather die than live with his disease, he had told her so a number of times while he was still lucid enough. She also knew that even if he went to the hospital he would not last much longer. She wanted him to die at home and she got her wish. He died three weeks into the new year, holding Blair's hand in his.

Since that day Serena had been waiting for the news she had gotten today. Blair had been the picture of health and from a medical standpoint she ought to be able to survive another decade or two. But Serena knew that wouldn't happen. She lost the will to live when her husband passed. It was not a unique phenomenon. Serena was well aware of couples where one died and the other followed shortly after. Some called it death by grief, others called it Philemon and Baucis syndrome but whatever it was it happened and she had expected it to happen with Chuck and Blair. Two people who were never without each other in life would not want to be separated for long once death had parted them. It had taken six months. This morning Serena had gotten the call from her nephew telling her Blair was dead.

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><p><em>Twelve hours earlier<em>

Blair pulled the covers up to her armpits and stared blankly at the ceiling. She couldn't get used to going to bed alone no matter how she tried. Usually she would talk to Chuck in the darkness, pretending that he was still there. Not tonight. She didn't need to pretend tonight. She knew she would be with him soon.

She thought back on their life together. Remembered all the hardships during their teen years. Remembered how one of their biggest problems had been that she worried he might once again value business above her. She had never said that outright in therapy but she supposed he knew anyway. She very vividly remembered a night when they were in each other's arms making love and he had said to her that everything that mattered to him was in that bed at that moment. He had said something similar years later when they had been vacationing in Greece. A late night thunderstorm had frightened all three of their children, though Julian didn't care to admit it even though he came running to his parents' bedroom. They had all sought refuge in their parents' bed, which had thankfully been king sized even though Blair and Chuck usually slept closely together, spooning. Celeste had been curled up in Blair's arms, Philip had been sleeping on Chuck's arm and Julian lightly snoring when Chuck had looked at her and said that everything that was important in the world was there in that bed. Tree years later one of the children would be gone.

She remembered so much of the good and a bit of the bad. She remembered wild, passionate nights that had seemed never ending. She remembered times when all three children had had the stomach flu, times when the children had argued with each other to the point of driving her mad, times when she had been fighting with Chuck. She remembered cozy nights in front of the fireplace with their children wrapped up in blankets drinking hot chocolate. She remembered the Christmases, the birthdays, the Thanksgivings. She remembered success in their business and triumphs on the social field. Above all she remembered Chuck's constant support and presence. He was always there, always.

Until now. But he would be with her again soon. She was no longer Blair Waldorf, no longer Blair Bass, no longer recognized herself. It wasn't so much a grief process since she had begun to grieve for him when he first got his diagnosis. The man she had married and lived her life with had been gone for a while when his heart stopped beating. It was more a sense of not being complete, a feeling she couldn't put up with. She hated looking back at her memories, hated knowing that the best years had long gone by and would never come again. What was there left?

She knew her children would be okay. Much to her disappointment they hadn't actually needed their mother in ages. She knew she was done here on earth and wanted to move on. She and Chuck had said it to each other countless times over the years. Where you go I will go as well. Now he had gone and she would follow.

She closed her eyes.

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><p>Last night I did toy with the idea of basing a multi-chapter fic on this, expanding on this particular take of a ChuckBlair marriage. But I have like four thousand ongoing stories anyway so I'm not so sure. But please review and let me know what you thought of this story!


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